As long as their ship has enough seats (different ships have different multicrew capabilities) a Commander can directly invite players, or can set their vessel to allow multicrew access. Commanders looking to play as crew can either accept direct invites, or activate a new “looking for ship” feature, which will automatically place them as crew on a suitable vessel with multicrew access allowed, making the process quick and painless.
When joining a crew, a Commander will log out of their current vessel and transfer to the multi crew vessel, regardless of distance. They can also leave at any time (or be evicted by the ship’s owner) at which point they can return to where their ship was last, making the whole affair a very friendly, drop in – drop out procedure.
-------------------------------------------------------
Whilst I am ok with instant transfer, for game play reasons, I think this should not be allowed to happen at any time.
Requiring both ships to be docked anywhere (station, surface base, outpost or capital ship
)
would not be much of a requirement (we need to do this to swap our ship or pick up NPC crews already).
I do not understand why we need a "telepresence" concept in the lore since the escape-pod technology allows us to insta-travel from ship to stations already, ship transfer of crews simply uses escape pods.
From my point of view the ideal implementation would require the wannabe crew to be docked and the host ships to either be dock or pick up an escape pod that pops up as a result of the transfer (which could be implemented at a later date). This would make in-combat transfer more difficult. Leaving can still happen at any time as one is essentially ejecting (or being ejected).
In flight ship to ship transfer should only be allowed if both are in close proximity (Visible range) leaving the door open to an awesome future where one could actually transfer using an SRV, fighter or space legs ...
Personally I'd like to see some distance limit (500ly? 1000ly ... don't know) but I can live without one.
The gunner role allows a crewmember to take control of all turreted weapons on the ship. They do not need to jump between turret views though. Using a third person interface, they control a reticule that all turrets within their arc will automatically follow; giving them improved spatial awareness and easy control of all turreted weapons. They also have access to two “quick slot” fire buttons, in addition to normal fire groups, that they can customize with modules, allowing them more options for activating weapons and scanners.
Furthermore, the gunner has access to advanced sensor systems, allowing them three hundred and sixty degree tracking arcs. This lets them activate advanced scanners (such as the kill warrant scanner) and missile launchers in any direction.
-------------------------------------------------------
Awesome!
The fighter con role lets a crewmember launch and control a fighter, even if the helm has already launched a fighter using NPC crew. This allows multicrew ships to have two fighters active at a time. In addition, if the ship has enough fighters, both crewmembers can take on the fighter con role, meaning three human controlled ships can be flying at the same time.
-------------------------------------------------------
I'd prefer the fighter con to be controlling NPC fighters, it makes him the wing leader!
However, as they share the benefits, so too do they share the punishments. Any crime that the ship suffers is applied to all crewmembers equally. But when a Commander leaves or ends a session, the crew will have the option of avoiding taking the crimes with them, but in doing so, will lose all credits earned. It will be their choice.
-------------------------------------------------------
I have some doubts about the whole punishment and rewards, being able to wave everything seems wrong. If one gets a bounty its a bounty, it is not such a big deal in the end. How about allowing just a grace period where if a crew pulls the trigger and the captain ejects him/her then the bounty is transformed into a fine (but stays a bounty for the person that pulled the trigger) and viceversa, if the captain pulls the trigger the crew can just eject to stay clean, but loosing any earning.
I think the crew should also get % of any trading profit (perhaps decided by the captain) like wings, even if nothing happens mid flight. This would always be payed unless the crew was being ejected for earning a bounty if the captain declared the ship to be a lawfull vessel. For pirates this would not apply and the crew would always get their cut. Arrgh!
To this end, to avoid exploits, like people being on board and earn money without doing much and maybe even be sleeping in RL, I think that turreted weapons and fighters should not be available to the Captain whilst the relevant station is in use by another CMDR (one more reason for fighter con crew to control all fighters) and perhaps even add some sort of dead-man switch feature like all crew to confirm ready before super cruise/hyperspace, or all bounty scans need to be performed by the gunner .
